Croatia steals the show at FEI Balkan Endurance Championships 2014

Aroundtherings.com - Full Article

09/25/14
The FEI Balkan Endurance Championships 2014 took place on 20 September in Meljak in the Barajevo municipality of the Serbian capital Belgrade. Seven National Federations were represented with Croatia stealing the show and scooping two of the three individual medals as well as team gold.

The Championship was run over an 80km course made up of four loops consisting of 28km, 20km, 16km and a final 16km. The area of Meljak lies south of the city of Belgrade and is nestled between the two major mountains of the region: the Avala Mountain found to the south east of Belgrade and the Kosmaj Mountain to the south west. The beautiful backdrop of rolling, rural hills provided a technical and testing course for this relatively new FEI Endurance event.

In line with the ever-increasing popularity of the Endurance discipline, this Championship has seen a huge growth in numbers since its inception in 2008. The first official FEI Balkan Endurance Championships took place in Sancrai (ROU) and had a total of 19 entrants, from which 10 successfully completed the 60km course. 2011 saw the event move to Koprivstitsa (BUL) with a similar starting field but a higher completion rate across the 90km course. Finally this year the starting field grew by 50% with 30 starters representing Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Turkey and, of course, the home nation of Serbia. Alongside a higher number of entrants, this year also saw the event’s highest ever completion rate of nearly 65% indicating the much more advanced level of competition now seen in this part of Europe...

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